Autumn has always been a very special time for me. I remember London in October: The city full of burnt wood and magic; the cold creeping in off pink skies; the warm evening traffic crawling slowly into nowhere. There is something so sedated and calming in this time. I breathe it in. And with each intake of burnt air a memory drifts into my head.

As a young boy I remember walks along the mansions near the river. It would be just as the light fell, as the parks and public spaces were chained and locked, and mellow winds chased the scents of the freshly dead summer around. Overhead the last flocks of migrating birds would twist and dive by. The final distant calls of nature would sound out and then fade with no reply. So many such evenings I would wander mesmerised down shadowy west London avenues, staring in amazement at the illuminated stained glass doors, the homely hallways behind them, and through large Victorian windows, family get togethers in the living room. I would watch young girls play piano, or peer through huge open plan rooms as families sat and ate supper in the distance. I loved those little walks. The tranquility as the light gave way, as the street lamps rescued the city from darkness, and as life and nature and all things living and dying settled down for the night. For a few brief moments I felt as though I was a part of it all, that I was watching a lost film roll of my own family life. It was with a longing sadness that I dragged myself home, my young footsteps echoing a loneliness that only I could understand.

Later on in autumn, as the evenings darkened ever earlier and cool winds cut chill and whistled through stairwells and lift shafts, I remember being sent on errands to the Fish & Chip Shop. In fear of strange shadows and pursuing footsteps, I would run back home, holding the bag of hot food against my stomach. But in my house a fish & chip supper did not signal a weekly treat whereby the day's food budget had been abandoned in favour of succulent golden battered cod, spiced Jamaican patties, pickled eggs and chips soaked in onion vinegar. No, they were sad events: suppers which signified that my stepfather was absent and my mother, due to the intake of several litres of cheap vodka, was incapable of cooking. Often my mother would use my short absence as an opportunity to gather up all the tranquilizers and sharp knives in the house. I would return home to find her sitting on the side of her bed, wearing a sagged and evil clown face, and either chewing on mouthfuls of pink and green capsules or running a sharp potato knife menacingly up and down her wrist. More often than not the fish would end up splattered against the wall and the chips tramped into the carpet or vomited up into the toilet. On very special nights I’d be hit in the head with the hot bag of food, and then sent off to call for an ambulance on another false suicide attempt. In the early hours of the morning my stepfather would return twelve pints of beer heavier, and finding the house empty, he’d stagger back out knocking up the neighbours until he found the one who had taken us in and saved us from police cells, or worse, the Social Services. I’d hear his deep dangerous voice asking of details and then he’d lead us home, a small rabble of sleepy heads, blankets and teddy bears. But that’s not a autumn memory, not really... that’s just a memory, a timeless reminiscence of days long gone.

Autumn is also the build up to winter, to crystal brittle skies and a silver sun whose distance fails to penetrate the cold. It’s a mid-time, a halfway house between two extremes, a time of beauty and romance and reflection. So I reflect. I send myself to sleep with past images and memories. As the leaves start to bruise and prepare to fall, and as goalposts replace cricket boundaries, so once again I get lost in memory and return to lands that no longer exist. This post was brought out by the season. It is born from changing times and lost and forgotten loves. On the winds of this new autumn, under fading October light, I deliver another piece of myself: The first 31 predominant memories of my life.

I do not remember being born; not many of us do. But I do remember being fed. That is my 1st memory, being held to my mother's breast as she lay on a blanketed bed feeding me. My 2nd memory is of being scolded for knocking over a glass full of Martini... my mother pushing me off my tricycle and onto the floor as she sponged up the wet. My 3rd is the year 1980. I had returned home after my first day at school with that nugget of knowledge: “It’s 1980. Mum, the year is 1980!” My 4th memory is watching my father open up his veins with a small meat cleaver after a violent argument with my mother. I watched from behind a long pleated skirt as my stepfather fought and wrestled him out the house. My 5th memory is a camel ride in London Zoo. Red top, Wellington boots, and beige Rupert the Bear trousers. My 6th recollection is my mother's scream, an unbearable sound that pierced my life and brought me fully into existence. My 7th is learning that my father had been murdered, dismembered, boiled, diced and flushed down a toilet. My 8th is finding my mother choking to death on the froth of an overdose, pills and broken glass littering her room. My 9th memory is of the hospital ward where she laid for a week - bruised, unconscious and full of tubes. My 10th memory is taking a beating from my stepfather and then having my head shaved. My 11th is a dark room, nighttime radio, the glurping of neat alcohol being poured from bottle to glass, burning cigarettes, LED’s and tears. I remember the touch of pubic hair as my mother rubbed herself against my little legs. My 12th memory is realising that my brother and sister had rejected and distanced themselves from me after it was properly understood that I shared a different father. My 13th memory is my mother turning up drunk on my birthday and smashing all my new toys. My 14th is falling off my bike and losing consciousness. I remember pulling a wheelie, a pair of spinning handlebars, approaching concrete ground and then nothing. I came around grazed and bloodied on a public bench with a pair of watery grey eyes peering into mine. “You ‘ad a bit ov a fall young man... you’re Ok though!” My 15th memory is the Black House*. My 16th is my mother spraying perfume in my stepfather's eyes and then his hands, tattooed with ‘Love’ & ‘hate’, smashing into her jaw. My 17th is breaking my collarbone and laying in unbearable pain for 3 days before being taken to hospital. My 18th memory is being hit by the sperm of one of my mother's lovers. My 19th feeling the force of adult fists and kicks. My 20th is my stepfather doing the ironing in a dress. My 21st recollection is being arrested and detained in Hammersmith police station after throwing a grapefruit through Mr Brownhead's window. My 22rd & 23rd are of my mothers repeated suicide attempts. My 24th is being summoned to my mother's room and her declaring that she was dying of cancer. My 25th memory is being hit in the side of the head by a large bunch of keys. My 26th is fleeing the family home with my mother, brother & sister. A secret car ride across London and hiding from my stepfather. My 27th is the window ledge of Hobb's Hotel in Victoria, my paralytic mother swaying on it 70ft above the ground. My 28th is Christmas 1988, my mother's lesbian lover trying to strangle my sister to death. My 29th is White City Estate. No furniture, gas or electricity. It was cigarettes, stolen cars and my mother's final, yet unsuccessful, suicide attempt. My 30th memory is throwing a world globe out off the geography room window and being permanently excluded from school. My 31st memory is starting off on my first days building work at the age of 15. I realised on that day, as i returned home absolutely exhausted after 8 hours of soul destroying work, that I was no longer a child, that the burst-balloon-sponge-cake party was over. I also realised that hell was not an obligatory place of stay and I was not there on her Majesty’s service. There were roads which led to hell and if I was ever to return there again it would at least be in consequence of my own footsteps. In a sense that sums it up. From the fall of my innocence rose my independence, a passionate and dangerous independence that flirts with hell without quite descending into it. But maybe that’s not really a choice? Maybe I am just a blessed and lucky sod?

Anyway, that’s my month of memories... as many reminiscences of my dead youth as there are days in October. But contrary to what it may appear, I have never thought of my young years as a broken or traumatic time. Far from it, my overriding recollections of those years are the memories that do not exist but those which litter and fill in the gaps. The childhood I remember was one of joy and escape... of exhilarating bike rides, hard schoolyard walls and dusty football marathons. I recall late evenings, staying out playing as one by one the other children were called home and finally I was left kicking my ball down dark streets alone. So, in tune with the new season, that is how I see my youth: it was a bruised but not a battered time. It was an autumn and not a winter. And as the new season imposes itself proper and mornings and afternoons sweep cold, my eyes can only blink heavy through golden tones and I can only ride high as once again the scent of burnt wood wafts through another European city. In a way, the combined beauty of 33 autumns is the answer to my unknown equation. The present can never be more wonderful or less hellish than it is right now, because after everything, and before anything else, this is all that there ever really is.

DennisWow, just wow this hit like a truck full of bricks. You're an amazing writer. For me this month is sad cos everyone I've lost pretty much always was in Oct so it's depressing. I like winter but not autumn it's too sad.Doug

London and especially West London that you write about is a bewildering place. Large mansion houses, comfortable lives coexisitng against poverty riden estates and people doing the best they can, making enormous compromises in what they want/need/desire just to get by. I too used too and still do glance through the large Georgian and Victorian windows and see the lives inside these flats and houses and sometimes my heart dies a little more for the lack of it.London forms our charachters as much as parents,friends and loved ones.You capture that so well.I love you of course and that part of you that is forever London.Best Wishes my special friend.I hope all is well and that your heart smiles.NickXXX

This is my first visit to your blog. I really think your negative memories could be keeping you down a "negative" life path. You seem very intelligent and I just wonder what if you took each of those negative memories and replaced them with positive memories. How would that impact your life?

Smell can trigger memories for me, but it is more atmospheres that do it. It could be changing light, or a certain wind or nighttime radio in dark rooms... but whatever, it transports me back to the time. In a way they are more than memories, they are places that still exist... they are still here.

Yes, thats what I meant when I said "it can never be more beautiful or less hellish than now". That meant that whatever it is that this time and moment brings or means to you, it can never be anything else. Autumn is full of tragedy for me too (well, tragic events) but somehow they've not been able to push aside the beauty that this time brings. maybe you need an autumn vacation in London? Nick will stand your travel expenses and put you up! ;)

West London is one of those place where poverty and opulence live side by side. Fulham, where I grew up is ultra exlusive along the river and nearing chelsea, yet in between it is littered with council estates and houses. Just up the road is Shepherds Bush, which is very similar. I think I enjoy that mix, at least the escape it allowed me at that time. But I'm lucky, I never peeered through windows and aspired to be what I saw... I peered through the windows and was glad of who I was. Londoçn is right through to my bones... she halfed killed me, and has surely cut 40years off my life, so I am obsessed with her. It's a love/hate relationship, and though I write with fondness of those city streets I coulod never live there again... (not straight, anyway!)

that post...made me think of the only time I ever spent in London, just this one week in autumn of 1998. Sure there is a difference between the atmospheres one takes in as a tourist/inhabitant. One of my strongest memories of London has to do with being hungry and broke though, eating a cheeseburger in the humid grass of Hyde Park, observing the squirrels getting ready for winter, thinking how basically everything that humans feed on or live off would rot in the ground if we put it there, except for money. Or in your case, stories. Keep bringing them back to light, I am positive you are smarter than the squirrels and do never not know where to find them ;)

I'd welcome you back, but as it was me who went AWOL it wouldn't make much sense... & I'm not big-headed enough to welcome myself back!

SZo, thanks as always for your comment... it was hard gto read as it was hard to live, though strangely enough it wasn't hard tyo write or express. The past is what it is - it's gone, and that's the beauty of it.

I didn't say that there was tragedy on my side... there has been, but the season itself washes that away.

At the end iof the text i wrote: '...it can never be more WONDERFUL or less HELLISH than now...' that meant that the present, the exact moment we take our next lungful of air, that isd ALL there is. If it's a happy breath or a tragic one that's all it ever can be... because it-'s all that really exists.

One week of London in autumn is better than a life of summer somewhere else... though the truth is that for many years I coyuldn't distinguish between the seasons, they alml rolled and merged into each other. That is heroin... that'sc what it does... it numbs deowxn everything even the enviroment.

Thanks for still passing by, reading and commenting... quite a few don't any longer.

I enjoy the first hint of summer, but when it becomes more than that I go into hiding (usually lobster red and peeling!)

As for christmas, I love the build up. Not the shopping or lights, but the atmosphere. I remember long bus rides down Chelsea's Kings Road, staring out into the dark cold evening from tyhe warmth of the bus. I enjoy feeling snug... knowing that sucvh vileness exists outside of one's shelter yet feeling completely protected by it. Storms do the same... early afternoon storms where darkness falls early and rain and hail batter the city and buildings.

I think that's more of a fantasy, because growing up there wasn't that comfort in escape... the inside was always far worse than the exterior. If a gale was blowing outside, it meant a hurricane inside. i'm just lucky IO love the wind!

Thanks once again & will let you know when the book finds a publisher (or the other way around!)

Thanks for commenting. Others have had a life just as hard... many even harder. I always say that trauma/tragedy is relative and it's not the biggest nor most bizarre events that always hurt the most. I've known people to have suffered more than me from a break-up or the death of a relative. Emotions are hard and we all have to deal with them.

Anyway, thanks again for your wxords and compliments... My Very Best Thouights & Wishes, Shane. x

I suspect that most of those people who no longer comment are still reading. I often wonder if I should continue to comment because all I seem to say is 'Great work again. Can't wait for the book'. But I'll always be reading.

'Snug' is the word. I love thunderstorms too. The sound of rain battering down on a window or a car is one of the most comforting sounds to me - it just emphasises Outside and makes you appreciate Inside more.

My idea of hell is high noon on a crowded beach. But the sun can be nice on cold October mornings or even late night summers, watching amazing orange and purple sunsets.

Even better is when the neon starts glowing, reflected in the wet streets. Blade Runner is the ultimate Rain Film. I remember walking out of that and everybody going 'Oh my God what a dark depressing future'. I was like 'I'd love to live there!'

Your 14th -- pulling a wheelie, a pair of spinning handlebars, approaching concrete ground … gave me a first-class hackle alert – raised the hairs on the back of my neck. I had nearly the same experience (at about the age of 14!), which I haven’t thought of in … 40 years? It was my friend’s bike that I was borrowing, the road had loose stone, & I went all the way over, with doctors later having to pick bits of it out of my back. And of course at first it was hilarious, all of my buddies laughing uproariously, while I was ashamed and furious that I couldn’t stop my tears …

You can repeat yourself as much as you like... it's more the interaction that I enjoy.. Of course, you can just say "hello" or comment if you've a question or would like to give your thoughts. The comments (no matter what is said) are always appreciated, because in my life there have not been many people willing to give me their time... it's nice when people do.

Thanks for reading and taking the time to comment, that's very kind. I've had so many accidents on bikes that not falling off was an achievement! My broken collarbone came from another fall, that time a bunnyhop at the top of a hill. I suppose that's the price we pay for being a part of the BMX generation.

Hi Shane, I got a comment from Skillz today and it reminded me that I have not commented on your blog in a million years. I have been reading quietly and not saying much. Started a blog about my son's heroin addiction:

Hi there, this is my first visit to your blog and wow, what an opener your profile was. I too had a very hard childhood and often, a look, a song, a tone, a picture sends me tumbling back into that dark place where my life was held in the hands of a violent abusive father. I know a lot of what you write will be painful to read, I grew up in West London too but I must say I'm hooked and therefore must sign up and follow. I finally escaped my life in London and now live in the mountains of Andalucia, Spain where at least the goats can't offend me!

Great blog, glad I found it. Will read more and return to contribute more comments:)

Shane, I re-read your posting and I love the positivity of the ending.

White City . . I remember it well . . Blomfontein Road, South Africa Road, Uxbridge Road, Shepherds Bush Market etc. etc. Our family home was in this area and my brothers went to Christopher Wren School!!

A truly beautiful, piece of writing, full of artistry. I'm a fan and will return to read more. Thanks for putting this out there Shane . . Thanks:)

hi first time visiting ur blog through FMB. nice tough ...its fascinating , when reading ur welcome message & profile story , I thought at the end i will read that u don't use anymore :)) ...but wait , NO!I can't believe u still write including all those !I wish the best for u ... follow u here.

Hi Shane,spent a few hours going through your writings and enjoyed them very much.keep thinking about stopping using myself..mainly dihydrocodeine and meth..but i've never felt quite as well as i do while using opiates...more optimistic,creative,etc.hope you are well.cheers, ed..scotland.www.equilibrauk.com..articles.

Shane, don't know if you knew her or heard her songs but Louisa Mark, one of my childhood pals who lived and grew up in Sheperd's Bush and sang lovers rock died over the week-end. I have a little tribute for her on my blog.

Thanks for venturing across and reading & commenting. No, it doesn't end with me stopping using... & in that way it keeps the blog real. It's very seldom that there is such an ending in heroin addiction, and I am very suspicious of happy endings.

This is my first time here, and I will be back. What wonderful writing. Memories stay with you forever. Good or bad, they are part of the man you are today. I, too, used to be a heroin head. I live in the States. I am saving my meager earnings to visit London. You are a great writer. I will be back. Peace.

thanks for taking the time to reply shane.you mentioned not having internet access at home.im using a usb modem.it uses mobile phone signals.i'd recommend one if available in france.enjoyed the post where all the users got busted and all the goodies were laid out on the wall!i'm always looking for emergency contacts so i'd have collected a phone number from each of them.especially in france as you mentioned how hard it sometimes is to find stuff.up here it takes less than 30 mins!

You are an amazing writer .. Thanks for sharing you memories, its funny how you dont think they upset you .. yet you must have blanked them over the years :) You obviously have tremendous strength of character , This was my first visit to your blog but wont be the last

Have you ever read "Ode To A Nightingale" by John Keats? It is about a man who declares his own heartache and feels numb as if he took a drug only moments earlier. He is not envious of the Nightingale's tune but thrilled because he is elated by its happiness because he, too is happy in the ecstasy of his own drugged and drunken world. He talks about his desire to fade away because, unlike the Nightingale, he has had troubles that the bird has never known....“the weariness, the fever, and the fret” of humanity. He continues in this drug induced fantasy and almost plays with the idea of death but realizes that if he were to die, he wouldn't be able to hear the Nightingale's beautiful tune. At the end of the poem, he does not know if it was real or not. He states the famous lines "Was it a vision, or a waking dream? Fled is that music:—do I wake or sleep?" Shane...the reason I go on about this poem, is because I believe that you are the man and the Nightingale is signing to you. That you live half in the world of reality with beautiful writing hearing the langorous sounds of the Nightingale and wanting to be vital, but then you lose yourself like he does "as though of hemlock I had drunk, Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains." You flitter between the boy who walks through the streets taking in the warm stained glass windows and dreaming of the happy families, to the neon lit nightmarish scenes of your childhood. I think the heroin allows you to float away and constantly make you wonder if you are awake or if you sleep. You are an old soul....what a shame it would be if one final hit of heroin silenced the Nightingale for good and you vanished into the ether allowing the liquid of the drug to literally dissolve you. To quote Keats, please don't " fade away into the forest dim."

hi..l work as a counsellor who uses art more often or not to help my clients..many of them children. I think you are an amazing writer...lyndacant remember how l found your blog..maybe from the 4 blobs l run and l looked to see who follows and then who follows themmml suppose l am just interested in people, cultures,. and almost anything if l am honest! goodnight

I'm back online now, and use my phone modem through my computer. I've aways done that, but a 500€ phone bill left my line disconnected! lol

God, how I miss those 30 minute waits. They were hell when I was there... little did Iknow the troubles our european cousins faced!!! Next time you're peering out the window, clock watching and cursing the dealer, have a little though of me... it may help!

Thank you so much for your comment I there was a prizefor comment of the month, you'd have won it. Ufortunately there isn', so you'll have to make do with my few words.

I wasn't aware of that poem, no... but I am now.

You're probably correct inmost you say... the only point I'd dispute is living half in and half out of reality. Heroin doesn't take you out of life (not in the sense of alcohol or weed). It calms life down to point where it is acceptable. It's not a drug we use to get wasted, it's a drug we use to get normal. That's complicated toexplain and surely complicated to understand. It's for a seperate post not a comment.

I'm not sure if you will ever read this ...but if you do..I have to tell you..this helped me a lot..I thought I had a bad childhood..but looking at your post, mine is not even close to yours. And it's gr8 the way you see it as autumn and not winter..I appreciate it! Way to go! But I must tell you, you need a lot of healing...try exploring holistic healings..they are very helpful...my life changed when I learnt them myself..peace!

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